>> good evening, lawrence. thank you. thanks to you for staying with us the next hour. if you have the kind of job where you have to ask for your days off a long time in advance or need to make family travel plans for next year, i have good news from today's news. we can get your election year calendar locked down. now, on friday, as we reported on friday, the state of florida decided to move its republican primary up. they're moving it up really early to january 31st. then after florida made that announcement, like dominos falling right into your winter plans, the other early primary and other caucus states have followed suit and moved up their likely election dates as well. here's how it looks right now if you want to make a note of it. the iowa caucuses are mostly going to be held on either january 2nd or january 3rd. the new hampshire primary will probably be held on january 10th. nevada has just decided to move its caucuses up, too. it appears those will be held on

january 17th. south carolina has moved its primary up as well to january 21st. then to wrap up the month, we will get the florida primary, as i said, on january 31st. what this means is that all of the other primary dates are sort of in flux, too. super tuesday right now is expected to be on the 6th of march. but, again, things are in motion. however else the calendar shakes out, though, where things will culminate, if you want to make your plans, where things will culminate, is, of course, at th conventions. the republican convention next year will be held in tampa, florida, the week of august 27th. the democratic convention will be held the week of september 3rd in charlotte, north carolina. north carolina. why are the democrats going to north carolina? north carolina after all has a giant downside for the democratic party which is organized labor is a really important democratic constituency. and a very embattled one right now. union rights under attack this year essentially anywhere that republicans have governing authority, from washington, d.c., to madison, wisconsin, to

columbus, ohio, to anywhere you noticed a teacher picketing or a firefighter writing a letter to the editor. it has been a tough year for union rights. democrats will not be making it any easier on unions when they convene in charlotte, north carolina, since that is a city without a single unionized hotel. this is not some sort of secret that they realized after the fact. democrats made their decision to hold their convention in charlotte in full knowledge of the union rights problem that it presents. but they decided to go there anyway. they decided to go there anyway because north carolina is really important to them. really important specifically to barack obama's re-election effort. in the 2008 presidential election, you may remember that the day before election day, then-candidate barack obama's grandmother, the woman who had raised him, died in hawaii. and that night, the night before election day, election eve with the on-air countdown clocks already ticking down the number of hours before the first polls would open, barack obama went to

north carolina and he stood in the rain at the university of north carolina and he gave his closing arguments, in a sense for the whole 2008 election. it was a powerful, personal moment because it was one of the only times he has ever been seen to cry in public when he was talking about his grandmother. it was also a powerfully emotional political moment because here it was the night before the presidential election and the democratic candidate is in the south. because there are multiple southern states that are within reach for the democrat on election day. >> after decades of broken politics in washington, after eight years of failed policies from george w. bush, you don't need to boo, you just need -- you just need to vote. after 21 months of a campaign

that has taken us from the rocky coasts of maine, to the sunshine of california, we are one day away from changing america. one day. >> the next day barack obama went on to win florida. he went on to win virginia. and he went on to win north carolina. where you saw him speaking there. a democrat winning in north carolina. bill clinton did not win north carolina either time he ran, but barack obama did. barely. obama and biden won by a little more than 14,000 votes. democrats actually had a big year in north carolina in 2008. that year the jesse helms senate seat was up after the far, far, far, far right senator jesse helms stepped down, that state had gone to elizabeth dole. in 2008, republican elizabeth dole, the incumbent republican senator in the jesse helms seat, in 2008 she lost that seat to a democrat. kay hagan. she got beaten badly in that race. elizabeth dole losing that race by nine points.

for the governs race, it was a three-point race. the governor won. beth purdue bake became the first female governor. barack obama didn't need north carolina or indiana either. but seeing states like north carolina and states like indiana turn so unexpectedly blue was the exclamation point on the democratic victory in 2008. the democrats choosing north carolina for their 2012 convention was sort of a bold move and an emotional move. barack obama and joe biden won north carolina as i said in 2008 by the slimmest of margins. look at that. 49.7% to 49.4%. they won by less than 15,000 votes out of more than 4 million cast. the slimmest of margins. and they fought tooth and nail for every single one of those votes. this was the difference in new voters registered in the two parties.

democrats outregister new voters nearly 5-1 in north carolina. nearly 5-1. north carolina. democrats' new voter registration drives were very, very effective in north carolina. on election day, itself, there were more votes cast for john mccain than there were for barack obama. obama still won the state because organizing. they had a huge advantage in early voting. more than half of all north carolina voters in 2008 voted early. and early voters ultimately put obama over the top. early voting in those voter registration drives were absolutely key to barack obama winning north carolina in 2008. but the north carolina the democrats are going back to for their convention, just four years later, will be a very, very, very, very different north carolina. republicans in north carolina are doing everything they can to change the voting rules in that state. so a victory like the one obama got there in 2008 can never happen again. republicans in the state legislature in north carolina have proposed, for example,

reducing early voting time across the state. less early voting. they have proposed eliminating early voting altogether on sundays. why is that important? sunday is traditionally a day when a lot of black churches bring a lot of their parishioners from the church to the polls. republicans in north carolina have proposed eliminating same-day registration for anybody who wants to vote on election day. they have proposed new rules to make it more complicated and difficult if not impossible to conduct voter registration drives in north carolina. republicans in north carolina decided that to vote in the next election, north carolinians would have to show i.d. that they have never before had to show in order to vote. it's estimated that 500,000 north carolina voters do not have that form of i.d. 500,000. and, yes, those 500,000 are disproportionately minority voters and poor voters and students, voting groups that disproportionately vote democratic. now, remember, when barack obama won it last time, he won by 14,000 votes.

largely on the strength of early voting and voter registration drives. looks like that won't happen again. not if north carolina republicans change all the rules about those things. republicans wanting to make sure a democratic victory like that does not happen again, wanting to make it harder to vote and harder to register to vote. that is not an unusual thing. we have been seeing that all over the country recently. what is new and what is sort of amazing about north carolina in particular, especially because the democrats are going to hold their convention there, what is new and sort of amazing is what has happened to north carolina since the night barack obama won there. in the next election in 2010, north carolina saw an unprecedented flood of money into the races for state legislative seats. not money going directly to candidates but money going to the supposedly independent groups that are really obviously not independent. very really obviously partisan even though they are technically not supposed to be. so much independent money spent on behalf of republican candidates, spent to attack

democratic candidates in the state legislature races. so much money spent that north carolina's 2010 red tide was like no other state. for the first time since 1870 the state legislature of north carolina went to republicans in 2010. and once they got control of it, they immediately set to work trying to get rid of early voting and voter registration drives. sunday voting. sorry, black churches. and making you show i.d. to vote. making you show i.d. to vote that half a million north carolina voters do not have. thanks to 2010, for the first time since 1870, north carolina has a legislature and the independent, partisan money that got them there, the huge tide of independent money that got them there in 2010, get this, three-quarters of that money can all be tied back to one person. one guy. three-quarters of the money that flooded into the north carolina races into 2010 into the state legislature races all tied to one guy. his family members, his family

foundation and his business. money all pretty obviously controlled by one guy. he targeted 22 races. he got a republican into office in 18 of those 22 races. one guy. three quarters of the outside money in the entire election. one guy who just sat down for a four-hour interview with jane mayer. joining us now is jane mayer, staff writer for "the new yorker" magazine. her new article on north carolina republican king maker art pope appears in this week's issue of " jane mayer, thanks for being here. >> glad to be with you. >> should art pope sort of be seen as the one-man band that is the republican party in north carolina now or is he something new and different? >> well, in many ways he is the one man who is single handedly bankrolling a kind of conservative takeover of the state. at least that's how the democrats see it down there. it's a state that as you said is

just completely key to barack obama's re-election and it's a state that is traditionally neither completely red nor blue. it's kind of a purple state, but it went blue in 2008 and basically the republican party took one look at it and thought they've got to make sure that it doesn't go that way again in 2012. so there's been a lot of very careful and smart thinking going into the state and a ton of money. as you say, almost all of the accounts, three-quarters of the independent spending in 2010 were accounts that linked back to this one raleigh businessman named art pope who has kind of an empire of discount stores and is a longtime far right activist. >> in terms of -- in terms of art pope's political interests now that have become so important to the fate of north carolinians, as you say, he's sort of ahead of the empire of

discount stores. he inherited this business empire from his dad and his dad from his father before him. has art pope been pushing an agenda that is more broadly conservative than just the sort of narrow advaning republican partisan interests, things i described in the introduction? >> well, first of all, he makes a big point of saying he didn't inherit the business. it's a family business. he certainly went right into the family business and he now owns it. it's privately owned much like the koch brothers own their own company also. are his interesting narrow? they are -- he has a vision of america that requires kind of turning back the tide of history to before the new deal, basically. and he will say it has nothing to do with his business interests, but it does include things like opposition to the minimum wage law and he hires an

awful lot of people at minimum wages and he also have opposition to most taxes and to all kinds of government services and, of course, because he has a fortune that includes something like $150 million in a family foundation, taxes are something that he pays a lot of. so you can certainly see that his political vision dovetails with his self-interest but it goes beyond that i think really with him. he's something of kind of an ideological purist and a zealot to some extent. at least -- i spent, as you said, many hours talking to him. he's a very smart man. he's a lawyer who graduated from duke law school and he's conversant in political philosophy, but at the end of the day as one of the people i interviewed said there's a purile about him and it comes out. >> jane, why did art pope agree to talk to you? part of learning about the influence, especially in the

post citizens united world of these ideological billionaires who want to influence american politics, particularly the koch brothers, a lot of the reporting is why these guys are so secretive. >> he is secretive about his business. he didn't want to answer many questions about it. again, it's a privately held company and he didn't really want to talk about a lot of that. but the thing about art pope that's maybe different from the koch brothers, well, actually not, they also sought public office. he sought public office. he served four terms in the state legislature then he ran for statewide office. and i think as lieutenant governor and he lost. and i think in a way you can see him as a frustrated politician whose ideas did not sell at the ballot box and when he didn't really get power that way, you can see he funded an empire of kind of a conservative opinion machine and poured money into political races.

he'll say nothing he does is partisan or almost nothing. he defines it all as sort of policy oriented. but it always pushes the same interests. which is the republican party and small government. almost anti-government. and low taxes. >> jane mayer, staff writer for "the new yorker." congratulations on getting him to talk to you. thanks for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> we'll post a link to jane's article on our website. i'll encourage you to read it, specifically to seek out one detail you will not hear anywhere else which is that art pope left the libertarian party and ended up with the republican party, something having to do with sass quach as in the yeti. michael lewis is here for the interview tonight, from "money ball," "the blind side." his new book is called "boomerang." and how republicans have turned the "n" word surfaces from rick perry's presidential

campaign into bad news not for rick perry but bad news for the one african-american candidate in the race. that is ahead. let me tell you about a very important phone call i made.

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when the next president did kill the terrorists on america's most-wanted list, would you, "a" wall low privately in your envy and avoid public comments. "b" congratulate the new president. or "c" demand an apology? a, b or c? that is correct. former vice president dick cheney chose "c" demanding the strike that killed al awlaki on friday was a good thing for the obama administration to apologize to dick cheney for some reason. why hot? how about this one? your politician that turns out to own a piece of property that has a name and the name includes the "n" word. what do you do when that fact becomes public? a., deny it and come up with an elaborate cover story you must have had in the work since you first thought about running for office because my god it's the "n" word and it's your property and understand it's inflammatory and better have a cover story? do you use your cover story you undoubtedly must have? or do you b. apologize for it

and take responsibility. or do you, c., declare war on mexico? c. again. you're getting too good at this. texas governor rick perry this weekend responded to the publicizing of his family's "n" word hunting camp in texas this weekend by announcing apropos of nothing that he might like to send american troops to invade mexico. republican political science is not the same as other kinds of political science. we'll have more ahead. 

the idea that new jersey governor chris christie might possibly may be con receively weather permitting might run for president though he said he wouldn't, is a favorite campaign rumor this campaign season. "business week" reporting word from an anonymous republican donor saying governor christie is once again actively considering entering the race and will make a decision. the news of a reported reconsideration of a potential candidacy being reported in the context of the larger dynamics at work in the republican field right now. notice that the chris christie rumors are almost always tied to a fund-raiser of some kind. either a fund-raiser is the source of a rumor or fund-raising, itself, is the substance of the rumor. it raises one really interesting point about all the chris christie speculation for the other republican candidates. the third quarter for fund-raising just ended. the official numbers aren't due for a few days yet, but a mitt romney spokesperson tells "usa today", quote, we are going to

raise considerably less than what we did in our first reporting period. "the boston globe" has reported as of late last week that mitt romney's campaign is on pace to raise between $11 million and $13 million, a lot lower than the 18 million bucks he raised last quarter and lower than the kind of money he was bringing in the last time he ran for president in 2008 when mitt romney was relatively unknown on the national stage and was competing with a strong field of fund-raisers. mitt romney raising less money than he did before, meaning previous election, and than he did last quarter. mitt romney is supposed to be the republican establishment guy who has the wall street money all locked up. if he's raising less money, if he can't raise as much as he did in '08 or last quarter, what's the problem? what's going on with mitt romney's campaign? the theory floated by "the globe" gop financiers still not sold on romney. like maybe the ones who keep begging chris christie to run? well, mitt romney is still not seld selling the idea of himself, he's trying to appeal to social conservatives.

mr. romney went on mike huckabee's fox news tv show over the weekend and appeared to endorse something mike huckabee has been lending his star power to lately. defining personhood beginning at conception. that's a definition clearly aimed at banning all abortion outright. it is also something that could ban many common forms of birth control. >> would you have supported the constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life at conception? >> absolutely. >> so not that it would have had an easy sailing through the massachusetts legislature. >> but -- >> but -- but -- i'm not sure what the awkward fussing at the end of all about. someone has to ask mitt romney if he really wants to ban the birth control pill. that's what he just told mike huckabee. everybody, follow-up. also at the top of the race, the "washington post" ran a piece this weekend about the name of a

hunting camp used by rick perry and his family. the name includes the "n" word and was according to "the post" painted in big black letters across a front rock standing upright at the gated entrance. to be clear, it was not named by the perry family. the place came with the racial name in tact. governor perry told the "post" his parents painted over the rock. quoting now, perry's version event differs from different people who spoke in detail of their memories of seeing the rock with the name at various points in which perry was associated with the property. what did perry's campaign do? they said more or less the same thing to the rest of the press governor perry told the "post" in the first place. maybe they were hoping governor perry's plan for invading mexico would take over the mood cycle instead and everybody would forget about the racial slur ranch thingy.

>> it may require our military in mexico working in concert with them to kill these drug cartels and to keep them off of our border and to destroy their networks. >> while the invasion of mexico thing is a bold, bold plan, did not make the entirety of the beltway media forget about the giant "washington post" story about the perry hunting camp with the racist name painted on the rock. one of the governor's rivals for the republican nomination, herman cain, was a guest on a couple of the sunday political shows and he was asked to comment on the "washington post" story and the rick perry details. >> the name of it written on a stone and was "n" head. obviously it wasn't just "n" head. and he was part of that camp even as governor. your reaction, sir? >> my reaction is, that's just very insensitive. that is isn't a more vile, negative word than the "n" word

and for him to leave it there as long as he did, before i hear that they finally painted over it is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country. >> it was painted over. >> yes. it was painted over, but how long ago was it painted over? so i'm still saying it is a sign of insensitivity. >> so here's the state of play. mitt romney is not meeting the fund-raising levels he met in 2008 or earlier this year, perhaps because everybody is whispering and hoping about chris christie or anybody else. that's apparently making mitt romney totally willing to sign on to any idea that will win him support including, at least it sounded like this weekend, suggesting he'd ban the birth control pill. sure, please vote for me and make the money people stop calling chris christie. also rick perry has the whole racial epithet ranch thing to deal with. those two things taken together mean naturally in republican party politics, big picture, naturally, it's been a really bad day for herman cain. what? yes. herman cain. herman cain criticized rick perry's racist ranch name and

racist rock at its gates. as you just saw. then the conservatives piled on to herman cain. rush limbaugh accusing him of piggybacking on the "washington post" smear of rick perry. matt lewis at "the daily caller" calling mr. cain's comments at best premature and worst highly irresponsible. he goes on, it's a cheap shot and a signal cain is willing to play a race card against a fellow republican when it benefits him. erick erickson calling it a slander, cain is picks up and running with to get into second place. here's how herman cain was handling questions about the rick perry racist hunting camp story. >> his question, his question of was i satisfied with governor perry's explanation about the name on that ranch where he went hunting, and i said, yes, i am. next question. >> are you disappointed any of the other candidates haven't expressed similar reactions like you have? >> relative to?

>> relative to this rock on the perry -- >> no, doesn't bother me at all. >> some conservatives have said you bought into the liberal media trying to smear perry as a racist. do you think you played the race card? do you regret at all what you said on fox news sunday or abc? >> all i said was the mere fact that that word was there was insensitive. that's not playing the race card. i am not attacking governor perry. so people in the media want to attack him. i'm done with that issue. >> i'm done with that issue. the story breaks rick perry and his family has this land that's named a racial slur, a racial slur painted on the rock at the entrance to the camp. herman cain raises questions about how long it took to paint over the racial slur. for example, questions raised by the newspaper article. herman cain says, hey, that seems insensitive. by the second full day of the story, herman cain is forced to back track and is the one in political trouble. really? america, meet the republican party. republican party, meet america.

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this weekend in iceland, the parliament opened a new session that began with a religious service with iceland's elected dignitaies and their spouses getting danced all fancy and walking over to the cathedral. this is supposed to be a smile, smile, wave, wave deal. as you can see here in this video picked up today at boingboing.net this was not your typical easy stroll over to the church for lawmakers. almost nothing is easy in iceland since the banks crashed

and the global financial crisis. those banks turned little iceland into a giant insane clown casino, a great big phony financial world power that went bust overnight. the whole country essentially busted. your money's worth nothing and you're billions upon billions of dollars in debt and nobody can explain why. if the u.s. was on a brink of a meltdown in 2008, iceland sort of went over that brink. what we fear for ourselves pretty much happened to them. we're seeing here the latest protests of the rich guys who ruined iceland and the government that let them. people throwing eggs, people throwing yogurt. it's iceland. people in one case i think even throwing firewood at icelandic officials. you see this person right here? that person right there is the first lady of iceland. she is the wife of the president. she's basically the michelle obama of iceland.

look what she does at these protests. watch her. she's with this group of politicians, but she turns -- oh, wait -- there she is. she's broken away from them. she leaves them doing their best to get to the church and kind of quick walks like she's hoping her own handlers won't notice she's slipping away. then she starts talking to and embracing the protesters. the first lady of iceland hot foots it to the barricades where the eggs, you gurt and firewood have been coming from and people suffering for three years after this crisis. she walks over, hugs them and then climbs over the barricade. anyone in her fancy i'm the first lady go to church suit, she climbs over the barricade toward people who had been throwing stuff in her direction. people have been marching over bankers and the ruins of the global economy. in italy last month the biggest trade union shut down buses and trains and schools and government autopsy offices and called a general strike over austerity measures. too big to fail and too big to save. in spain, last week protests

over banks evicting people who can't pay their mortgages. unemployment there more than double the rate in the u.s. the people of spain are been turning out to say, you can't throw us out of our houses because we can't find work because there's no work to find. in new york city, the occupy wall street protests police this weekend arrested hundreds of occupy wall street marchers on the brooklyn bridge. hundreds of people arrested. occupy wall street showing signs of becoming occupy everywhere in america. occupy boston, occupy chicago, occupy portland, maine. occupy seattle. in greece, riots continue over new austerity measures as that nation tries to arrange a bailout from the rest of the european union. greece learned today its recession will officially drag on for a fourth year. the government broken by corruption and the people suffering because of it. you know anybody who works in banking or finance or global economics? you know any of those folks and

they have seemed a little green around the gills lately? maybe they've been ticking items off their bucket list or getting a little more religion than usual? it may be because they have looked up and realized that, yes, we survived falling off a cliff but that cliff is apparently subject to a landslide. the cliff is dissolving and heading right for where we are standing. in other words, the collapse of the american financial system that started at the end of the bush presidency has been forestalled as michael lewis puts it in his book "boomerang." it has been forestalled but not ended. quote, the financial crisis of 2008 was suspended only because investors believed they could borrow whatever they needed to rescue their banks. what happened when they ceased to be credible? this worsening economic crisis of ours is global and it is political and also local and occasionally tawdry and weird. one man who went to the tawdry and weird places around the globe trying to find out what went wrong, why and how is back. joining us, michael lewis,

author of bestsellers. "money ball" and "the blind side." his new book is called "boomerang." michael lewis, thanks for coming in. >> thanks for having me back. >> do you believe the sky is falling? >> it's more complicated than that. it is, i think what we're going through now is an extension of the financial crisis that began in 2007 and 2008. we have forestalled it, but what happened was these debts were created. they were private debts. they got -- they tended to be around the world nationalized. socialized. and the governments now are ceasing to be credible. and the question is, what happens when the governments aren't credible? who can step in and say, we'll put the panic to rest? and i think, you know, i think what's -- we're coming to a point of reckoning. i don't think it's the end of the world. but i think -- i think we've got kind of radical change in front of us, yes.

>> i have been following the euro crisis as best i can and getting increasingly worried about it. i've been doing a lot more reading about it. i haven't quite figured out how to talk about it yet. reading your book made me more scared. it occurs to me if you think some things aren't too big to fail then countries aren't too big to fail. i can't understand what happens when countries fail. >> yes. neither do the people who run europe. that's the question. the reason greece isn't just allowed to go. greece can't afford to repay its debts. it will default in some way. it will not repay its creditors 100 cents on the dollar. the reason the european union is desperate to forestall that is that they don't know what happens when it happens. i mean, they do know that, for example, all the banks in greece will be bankrupt because they own a lot of greek government bonds. french banks and german banks are going to take big hits then it ripples through the financial system one more time. all of a sudden, you know, the banking system is really an act of faith. people are willing to put

capital into banks only if they kind of believe in them. they're black boxes largely to the investors who invest in them. if the faith starts to crumble, you get the 2000, lehman like environment all over again. what was interesting to me, though, is it looks from 40,000 feet, it looks like the same story everywhere, but it's very different from country to country. i mean, this financial i vent event has been a window into local culture. it's a series of regional events. it's different from what happened here. >> is the solution, though, actually a sort of -- do you take a best practices solution and apply it to all countries? do you say, you know what, ireland, that was cute. you got all excited about your housing. iceland, if you thought you could trade assets that had no value whatsoever and call them billion dollar assets that you could all end up being fake

billionaires, that was cute. you don't have a say in how to restructure the system after it melts down. everybody's going to get a one size fits all resilient financial system. >> who's going to impose that? they have to impose it on themselves, right? there's no external authority to come in and impose that. it's very unclear. i mean, we now moved from an economic question or financial question to a political question. which way are these people going to jump? are the german people willing to bail out the countries on the periphery of europe? polls say absolutely not. their government and leaders are trying to drag them into that relationship. the greek people, for that matter, do they want to even be bailed out? if the terms are they have to live in this endless austerity? probably not. so what you have is the center not holding right now. but the cost of -- i mean, what is going to ensue if greece defaults and drops out of the

euro, it's going to be ugly for a while. so everybody is doing their best to prevent it. >> is there going to be a run on banks throughout europe if that happens? if people cease to believe a euro-based economy can't survive because it's a euro-based economy, does every euro-based bank suffer? >> it's not a run on banks. i expect what happens instantly is the government says we're behind the banks. once again, everything is too big to fail, we're back to where we were. then the question is, which governments can afford to bail out their banking systems? we're in a very funny situation here. as bad as our banks were, our banks are really small in relation to the rest of our economy compared to europe. so we can actually afford to bail out our banks. germany can afford to bail out its banks. france not so clear. italy definitely not so clear. spain neither. so you have different situations. and the question is how the

market is going to respond to the countries once they say, you know, you can't put our banks out of business. >> once the full faith and credit of x country is rated as being something of what it's actually worth than an assertion of national sovereignty -- >> what we're seeing -- the credit bubble was about people ignoring risk. what's happening is people are learning what risk is and learning the price. >> michael lewis. the book called "boomerang cln travels in the new third world." absolutely terrifying. kept me up night grinding my teeth. >> i hope it didn't bore you. >> i don't grind my teeth for things that are boring. still ahead, very clever subversion, all completely legal. it's the best new thing in the world today. ugh, my feet are killin' me.

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this is a heads-up story, something to be aware of because this may end up being a big deal but we can't know where it's going. here's how it starts. before retiring on friday as chairman of joint chiefs of staff, admiral michael mullen told the senate something way more blunt than anybody expected, something that sounded what you'd say to start a war or explain after the fact why you already started the war. >> the network for one acts as an arm of pakistan's internal services intelligence agency. with isi support, operatives plan conducted that truck attack as well as the assaults on our

embassy. >> admiral mullen saying pakistan has been more or less directly been killing american soldiers. in this truck bombing in eastern afghanistan which wounded 77 americans on the eve of this year's 9/11 anniversary and this big coordinated attack on the u.s. embassy and international military headquarters in kabul last month. mullen saying when a group called a haqqani network mounts attacks like these on america, that haqqani network is pakistan and in his words, it's an arm of pakistan's intelligence service. that's the kind of thing that does not usually get said out loud and directly. when the u.s. government says another country is killing u.s. troops out loud and directly, that's close to the u.s. government saying, here we come, let us introduce you to the united states marine corps. then a few days after mullen dropped that bombshell in the senate, another one dropped. "the new york times" quoting anonymous sources saying publicly for the first time when u.s. and afghan officers were

ambushed at a meeting in pakistan in 2007, they weren't ambushed by militants, by locals, by the taliban or something. they were ambushed by the pakistani officers the americans were meeting with. quote, at first the meeting to resolve the border dispute seemed a success. despite some tense moments the delegations ate lunch together, exchanged phone numbers and made plans to meet again. as americans and afghans prepared to leave, the pakistanis opened fire without warning. again, this happened in 2007. which means americans have been keeping news of this ambush quiet for four years. what were they waiting for for four years? why have they decided to tell the story publicly now after four years? then the unexpectedly brutal truth about pakistan trifecta was completed today by named u.s. sources on the record. the headline in the "usa today" newspaper, majority of ieds are traced to pakistan. quote, from june through august, u.s. troops detected or were hit

by more than 5,000 ieds. the most for any three-month period since the afghanistan war began in '01. those bombs killed 63 troops and wounded more than 1,200. more than 80% of the ieds are home made explosives using fertilizer produced in pakistan. pakistan effectively directs the activities of the group that attacked the u.s. embassy in afghanistan last month and set off a truck bomb that wounded nearly 80 u.s. troops. pakistani personnel directly attacked and killed an american major and wounded three other u.s. officers in 2007. also pakistan the primary source for the material for the bombs that are the primary means of killing americans in the afghanistan war. okay. single most shocking thing about those three news flashes is not that they are true. these things are awful news, but they are not shocking given what we know about pakistan. what is shocking is that different parts of the u.s. government and the u.s. military are now letting us, the american public, know all of these

things. all at once. in quick succession. why are they telling us this now? are they trying to prepare us for something?

the best new thing in the world today comes from the occupy wall street protest in lower manhattan. the protesters there have been barred from electronically amplifying their voices. to blow horns, no microphones. they instead have to rely on the human voice, alone. early on in the two-week-old occupation, they came up with an ingenious operation that they call the people's mikes. it goes like this. >> on september -- >> on september. >> 17th -- >> 17th. >> 2011 -- >> 2011. >> people from all across -- >> people from all across. >> the united states of america -- >> the united states of america -- >> and the world came to protest -- >> came to protest -- >> of the economic and political elites --

>> of the economic and political elites. >> you get the idea, right? one person speaks and the crowd repeats their words in unison so everybody can hear what the unamplified person said. this weekend nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz visited the occupy wall street protest and his words to the protests were similarly amplified by the people's mike. watch. >> before talking about economics, i want to say something about democracy. >> before talking about economics, i want to say something about democracy. >> in july i was in spain. >> in july i was in spain. >> talking to the indignados there. the protesters. >> talking to the indignados there. the protesters. >> there i could use the blow horn. i didn't have to go through this eco chamber.

i realized the pedagogy of having to repeat what i saw is very valuable. >> i realize the pedagogy of having to repeat what i saw is very valuable. >> joseph stiglitz throws them a spanish word for protesters. yet the group is so practiced at this now that even i realize the pedagogy of having you repeat what i say is very valuable gets repeated lickety-split. they did very well. obviously this is something that can pretty easily break down, but even when it does break down, it is still kind of awesome. >> our financial markets -- >> our financial markets. >> have an important role to play. >> have an important role to play. >> they're supposed to allocate capital, manage risk. >> they're supposed to allocate

capital, manage risk. >> but they misallocated capital and they created risk. >> but they misallocated capital and they created risk. >> i love the look on the guy's face behind him when he didn't quite get that last line right. they misallocated capital and they created risk. the people's mike as not just a translator and amplifier but also an awesome artifying factor in this process. the translation and amplification of nobel prize winning economic thought and everything else happening there, too, i have to say, as a technology, the best -- >> the best -- >> new thing -- >> new thing. >> in the world. >> in the world. >> today. >> today. and now -- home free. amanda knox prepares to return to america after an italian